Lynchburg RV Campground - Thousand Trails

This seems like a pretty middle-of-the-road Thousand Trails park. Lots of space outside the campground, but the campground itself, as other reviews note, has issues. We stayed in the A lot-- it had many sites cut off from use by garbage bags over the electric boxes. Go SLOW on the roads--not only for the health of others but for your vehicle. The restrooms needed a great deal of repair but had nice hot water for the showers, which I do appreciate. Judging by outside appearance (the entrance, the lake/recreation area, the woods surrounding), this could make for a great camping experience. However, the sites themselves lowered the level of the experience, so check your expectations.

There roads getting there are nice. Park is nice with some rain wash damage in the low areas. The comfort stations are clean and well maintained. There was karaoke on Friday night but it shutdown by 1030pm and we were far enough away as it wasn't a bother. Saturday night there was a band again ending by 1030pm. The park seems to be in a maintenance and update phase so some sites were down and could not be used, this gave added space between campers and made the stay nicer in my opinion. We will be Back this fall.

Typical Thousand Trails. Needs maintenance and repair. The common areas are well kept and the campground in general is very pretty with a large pond with a great walking path around the pond. Nice Pool area. Camp Store and grill only open on weekends. Restrooms and showers are ok.

As mentioned in other reviews the interior roads are rough from wash outs but are drivable. The sites are wide enough but not level. To get 5 amp service costs an extra $3.00 a day. There are quite a few annual campers here. There are also quite a few sites that are out of order.

Biggest draw back is on Friday and Saturday nights there is Karaoke that starts around 6PM and goes until 2:30 3:00 am Not sure why the Campground allows this.

Overall this park is beautiful as far as the layout and landscape of the area. Its proximity to towns and city are nice but far enough away you dont get any of the noise or traffic. Roads getting to the park weren't bad other than one low bridge in town, but the roads in the park are HORRIBLY WASHED OUT. The park amities themselves needs some work, like with most thousands trails the potential is there but they aren't doing quite enough to keep up with them. The roads are bad enough that I recommend parking and walking the park to find your spot before making your way to it. The playground at the park was nice and the kids enjoyed it but during the summer I could see where this won't get used at all because its in direct sunlight with no shade at all.

The spots are fairly level, with 50Amp spots needing to be unlocked with a $3 per night charge. Our water pressure was great with no issues but or neighbor said they had very little water pressure. If you are visiting during the cooler months I would recommend using the 30Amp spots in A Loop to get a better view as all the 50Amp spots are in a middle row. Although all of them being in the middle row a the top of the loop does keep you from having to make your way through the washed out roads.

The area has very little cell service but good enough to get by, while the park offers a lot of tree coverage for the sites this may effect your ability to get cellular networks or starlink to connect well.The four bars of AT&T we were getting was with a directional antenna. The bath house was just "okay" in my opinion. It was good enough to use when needing to but far from the cleanest or nicest thousand trails has.

Only stay at this campground if you must. There was one friendly employee that ran the office, other than that every employee that roamed around in their golf carts (every couple of days at most) were grumpy and didn't even look at you, wave or say hi.
The roads are in terrible shape. They need some serious water deflection pipes, the ruts were at least a foot wide and a foot deep, so if you have anything riding low on your camper or RV, be careful.
Maintenance was non existant. the site next to mine had a broken water pipe for the whole time I was there (7 days).
I would say at least half of the sites are bagged up for some reason, who knows, could find any employees to ask. Amenities - none. The pool was supposed to be opening, but I didn't stick around to find out. shortened my stay by 7 days.
This campground should not be part of the thousand Trails system. I intend to write TT and let them know, I'm sure they know as I didn't get the usual survey from TT after my stay.

Came in and was shown the 50 Amps spots they have (not necessarily available but their inventory). Started looking for a 50 Amp full hook up in loop A. All 50 Amps are full but the problem is driving. The roads are so washed out, it feels like my class A will tip over! I was trying to avoid most of the ruts but couldn't when turning. After finding no 50 Amp full hookup in loop A, I decided to try Loop C, bad decision. Roads are just as bad, if not worse, spots are small with drop offs in almost every spot. I felt the coach if not put in perfectly would slide down the drop off at almost every site. Most sites are closed off with black bags covering the pedestal. Finally decided to go back to A and take what I can. Got a 30 Amp no sewer site. Power is good for 30 amps 123 volts. Water is low pressure 40 PSI. Running my generator as I type this as it is 90 degrees and 1 AC in my motorhome won't cut it. Sprint FMCA Hotspot had 1 bar but no real connection. Turned on my roof mounted booster and got 25Mbps D/L and 6Mbps U/L Verizon phones 6Mbps D/L. Very shaded spots so no satellite TV (at least in my spot).

Campground Name: Lynchburg RV Resort
Location: 405 Mollies Creek Rd, Gladys, VA 24554
Overall Campground Rating (1-5): 3
Maneuverability*: Some rough, washed out roads. There are also some obstacles you need to watch out for. There was a large tree stump that made backing into our spot somewhat difficult.
Campground Notes: About half the sites did not have working electric (bagged pedestals). Upcharge $3/day for 50 amp electric. Campground stated they are working on upgrading electric during this off-season (winter 2020). We had low water pressure when we arrived (<30 psi) and then the water turned off the next day for a few hours. After the water turned back on, it was better (40psi).

Site #: A55
Site Rating (1-5): 2
Site Notes: Large stump you need to watch out for when backing in. Site had picnic table but no fire pit (neighboring sites had fire pits). Sewer was very far back in the site so we ended up very close to neighbors even though it was a fairly large site. Lots of acorns falling very loudly on RV constantly due to time of year we were staying there. Decent amount of trash in site when we arrived.

Amenity Rating (1-5): 3
Amenity Notes: Laundry was unusable (2 washers, 1 broken dryer and 1 dryer that ate quarters). Path and hiking trails around lake was nice but many seemed to be closed or just not maintained. Nice swim beach on lake. Good fishing in lake as well. Decent sized playground but closed for Covid. Pool looked nice but was closed for season. Didn’t use mini-golf since they weren’t lending out balls or clubs due to Covid.

Reason for camping here: Location, on our way south avoiding 95 corridor.
Miscellaneous Notes: Percival Island - Nice hiking/biking trail in Lynchburg on James River about 20 minutes away. Walmart – 26 minutes away. Food Lion – 12 minutes away.

Dates Stayed: 10/16-25
Price Paid: $27, free with Thousand Trails membership + $3/day for 50 amp electric
Weather: Beautiful, unseasonably warm weather. Clear and mid-70s to low 80s
Verizon Cell Quality**: 2 bars with antenna on hotspot. Averaged 11.3Mb/s down and 1.9Mb/s up. Reading other reviews we thought we were going to be in a dead zone so that was pleasantly surprising. Signal was spotty throughout the campground loop. C loop was probably the best but there was no service down at the swimming beach.
Mail: We didn’t attempt to receive a package during our stay.

* For reference we are pulling a 33’ long Jayco travel trailer with a 2016 F350 Crew Cab Short Bed 4x4 which is 22’ with hitch giving us a total length of 55’.
**For reference we have two Google Pixel 2 XL on Verizon ‘Play More” unlimited data plans. For data we have an Inseego 8800L on Verizon’s expired prepaid unlimited hotspot plan. In areas of low signal we use a Netgear 6000450 MIMO antenna. Measurements are taken using the “Multi” test on Speedtest by Ookla.

A review by sdplusztravels, a fulltime family of three living on the road in a RV. This review is our opinion and we have not been sponsored or compensated by anyone. Follow us on Instagram (@sdplusztravels) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SDplusZ/). YouTube coming soon!

This place was just terrible. I’m trying to think of a positive to start with. I guess it was pretty quiet. Oh and the bathroom were decent. But that’s where the positives end.

Here are the negatives: First, we got emails from
thousand trails and the actual park. Both would say different things. We got an email from both the day before that said to call to check in. When we called, the person said to check in when we get there. Thanks for that mix messaging.

Then we get there nice and early ready to relax after a day of driving and things got worse. The person who checked us in didn’t have a mask on. She was nice enough. Told us to go to the B sites and pick any of them that are not covered; we went to do that and they were all either filled or covered. We had to go all the way back to the check on where the person was no where to be found. Someone as got there and let another group checking in know that if you don’t find one to keep on checking in A and C. Useful info. She also shared a lot of other info the other person failed to share.

Then we went searching for a site and found nothing in A. The roads were terrible. Not the type of roads to be driving on endlessly looking for a spot. Then we spotted the person that checked us in originally and she was burning leaves basically in the middle of the road. We had to almost drive through fire!

We finally found a spot and it was the most unlevel site we have ever seen. It took us 30 minutes to get level and even then we weren’t very level. The spots were gravel but mostly just mud. The layout of our site made it impossible to hook up to the sewer. We just skipped it.

Highly recommend skipping this place. Boondocking in a parking lot is 100% better.

This was our second visit to this Thousand Trails park. Easy check-in and we were allowed to choose our own site. Sadly many were unavailable due to electrical issues. We ended up in site B1 and it was level with lots of tree shade. Beautiful lake and excellent walking/running trail. My AT&T cell phone had 2 bars and the hotspot worked ok. There was no wifi available anywhere in the park. Clean bathrooms and showers. I would like to recognize the excellent staff at this park. Our original reservation was for 2 weeks and we had to take our RV into the shop for service. The staff allowed us to leave for a week while also keeping our original site. Wow! Then the general manager extended us for 2 extra days on short notice due to flash flood warnings at our next stop in North Carolina. Thank you Joyce! We were also approached on 2 separate occasions by staff members inside the park and given the new gate code (it changes every 2 weeks.) Thank you so much Lynchburg team for the excellent customer service! TIP: There is an RV friendly gas station about 1 mile from the park called Lester's Market/LFM fuel. Our 28 foot class A motorhome with tow car had no issues getting in and out successfully.